The Father of Classical Political Economy, Adam Smith, Believed People Are Driven by Morality

Section 1- background information

Adam Smith, was born, or baptized, on June 5, 1723 in Kirkcaldy, then, as now, a small, decent, unprepossessing port on the Firth of Forth. Like so many of the Scottish intelligentsia, his family belonged to the middling ranks of Scottish society. (Phillipson, 2010: 9-11) Both of his parents came from the minor gentry and had the connections with the law, the army, and the world of office-holding on which the routines of Scottish public life and politics. Adam Smith senior was a man of some ability and ambition. He was baptized in 1679, and belonged to the Presbyterian gentry of north-east Scotland. He was educated in law at Aberdeen and Edinburgh. In 1710 Smith senior married Lilias Drummond, the daughter of Sir George Drummond of Milnab, a wealthy and prominent Edinburgh politician. They had one son, Hugh, a sickly child, who seems to have worked in the customs a Kirkcaldy until his death in 1750. (Phillipson, 2010: 9-11) Lilias Smith died sometime between 1716-1718. Smith remarried again in 1720, and once again married into wealth. His second wife was Margaret Douglas, the daughter of a substantial and well-connected Fife laird who had sat in the old Parliament. Again it was a short marriage. Smith senior died in January 1723, six months before the birth of his second son Adam. Margaret Smith never remarried, her husband had left her comfortably off. She spent most of her long life in Kirkcaldy among her family and friends. She devoted her life to her son Adam.

It was there that Adam Smith went to school and later went back for long vacations. His relationship with his mother was close. She treated him with an unlimited indulgence; but it produced no unf...

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...ealth. At this point, the nature of morality will come into the place to regulate the wrongful behaviors that caused by the motive of morality. Motive of morality represented self-restriction and nature of morality represented the self-interest from individuals. These two components have special relationships that can restrict each other to prevent each of them going extreme; therefore, Smith used these theories to promote Lassie-faire in his book. "Smith quotes Lord Rochfaucault as having said "Love is commonly succeeded by ambition; but ambition is hardly ever succeeded by love" (Smith, 1759: 57). Smith then goes on to say that "all other pleasures sicken and decay" because of the passion for either material wealth or public recognition. It causes people to forget that there are other things in life outside of the internal drive for more power, wealth, and fame.